Outbreak, p.4
Outbreak, page 4
12
Svalbard
Tuesday, 8 March, 0757hrs GMT, 0857hrs local
THE NOISE OF the helicopters approaching the hut was deafening. But to Dr Sheila Mackenzie it was the welcome sound of salvation. The choppers would be bringing in the very people who would save her life. That’s it. Just dose me up with the right antibiotics and I’ll get through this in a week or two. Might even write a paper on it for the British Medical Journal once I’m over it.
Oblivious to the icy blast of wind that blew open the door to the hut, ignoring the chills and the beginnings of a fever she could feel pulsing through her body, she waited patiently for the people in protective suits to arrive. But when they did appear, framed in the doorway, it was still a shock. In the clear, sub-zero air of the Arctic morning, she could see six human figures wearing full PPE as they approached the hut, clad in shiny grey chem-bio spacesuits, their faces concealed behind black respirators. Two were carrying assault rifles, a precaution she thought totally unnecessary. Why? What did they think she was going to do to them? Two more had stretchers. Chris Coppinger ventured out a few paces beyond the door of the hut to greet them, but was met immediately by a shouted command in English.
‘Get down! Do not move!’
She saw him hesitate, then raise his arms and drop slowly to his knees. One of the men had his weapon trained on her kneeling colleague. This was surely absurd. Then came another shout.
‘On the ground! Stay exactly where you are!’
Things happened in a blur after that. Sheila Mackenzie had expected to be treated with care and sensitivity, like the vulnerable patient she was. Instead, she felt more like a captive animal in a lab. Two figures wearing protective suits advanced towards her, ignoring the medical details she was trying to give them, and then they forcefully laid her on a stretcher and bound her arms tightly across her chest. Next, one placed a breathing apparatus over her mouth and nose, covering them completely, with a tube connected to a cylinder that in turn was attached to the stretcher. Her relief quickly gave way to feelings of helplessness and rage as they carried her, half jogging, towards the waiting helicopter. Unable to raise her head, she had no idea what was happening to her colleague, Chris, or to the dead man back in the hut. And why weren’t they treating her immediately? Because this headache was rapidly becoming unbearable. Nobody spoke to her.
The flight in the helicopter was loud, claustrophobic and mercifully short. Incapable of movement, she stared up accusingly at the faces that peered down at her, blank and unspeaking, from behind their Perspex masks. Someone, she guessed, had given the daft order that she was not to be spoken to. She heard the pitch of the rotors changing, then a gentle double bump as the wheels set down on a hard surface. Now everyone was up and moving and, once again, she was being carted off like a piece of merchandise. There were a few brief seconds of cold sunlight. Then she saw she was being carried into the cavernous interior of a military transport plane. Still immobile, she fought to contain a surge of panic. Why wasn’t anyone telling her what was going on, for God’s sake? The stretcher-bearers pushed open the flaps of what looked to her like an isolation tent and set her down on a collapsible hospital gurney. They departed, and now another man appeared, also in full protective gear, but clutching a handwritten note in his neoprene-gloved hand. He held it up close to her face so she could read it.
My name is Dr Eckhardt and you are under my care. I must apologize for the conditions, but we believe you have been infected with a very serious pathogen. You will be treated. You are now on a Norwegian Air Force plane, which will fly you to Brize Norton airbase in England. From there your case will be assessed by the British Defence Scientific Laboratory at Porton Down. I wish you a speedy recovery.
He held up the note until she had read it to the end, then left. Porton Down? Jesus Christ! That was where the government researched some of the deadliest diseases on Earth. So that was it. They were going to keep her alive like a lab rat, long enough for them to find a cure. Sheila Mackenzie felt sick to the bottom of her stomach. Fighting the panic, she tried to twist her body round, but now another masked figure in a protective suit appeared beside her, holding up a hypodermic. With no warning, she felt a sharp jab in her shoulder as the needle slid in. They were injecting her in her deltoid muscle, she could tell, and for a brief moment she felt a painful, burning sensation before her world dissolved into a blur.
13
Whitehall, London
Tuesday, 8 March, 0914hrs GMT
BLACK, SLEEK AND polished, the Jaguar XF Sportbrake saloon circled London’s Parliament Square, then turned left into Whitehall. Matching the number plate with the one on their list, the armed police on the gates to Downing Street signalled for them to be opened and the car waved through to security. Once it moved beyond the heavy black metal barrier, more armed police gave it the once-over before lowering the electronic crash barriers and stepping on to the pavement. Seated in the back and gathering up his papers was Brendan Holmes, the government’s CMO – the chief medical officer. His special area of expertise also happened to be microbiology.
Holmes had been alerted by a succession of calls earlier, waking his wife and causing their Burmese cat to leap off their bed in alarm. The calls had come in thick and fast, from both the World Health Organization and America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. By the time his call had finished he’d learned that Norway had already dispatched an emergency management team to the Arctic. Holmes had scribbled a few notes on a pad he kept by the bed, then rung the health secretary. She didn’t hesitate. Holmes was to attend that morning’s weekly National Security Council meeting in the Cabinet Room at 0930 and brief everyone present.
Holmes stepped out of the Jaguar on to the rough cobbled parking space between No. 10 Downing Street and the back of the Cabinet Office. It was the unglamorous corner of Whitehall that the public never got to see and it always surprised Holmes how scruffy this back-end of the government power centre actually was. He grunted with irritation as he noticed he now had mud on his polished brogues. He reached into the back seat for his briefcase, then walked quickly around the corner and up the steps to the famous black-painted door of No. 10. He was relieved to see there were no media lined up on the other side of the street today, with their intrusive TV long lenses. More than one career had been torpedoed when someone had been filmed going in clutching clearly visible classified documents.
With the PM away in Berlin, the foreign secretary was in the chair today, yet it was the health secretary, Jay Spelling, who would do most of the talking. Spelling was very much a political appointee and Holmes privately had little time for her. He took his seat next to her and nodded to others around the table. It seemed he was not the only medical professional in the room. There were two of the senior directors from the JBC, the government’s Joint Biosecurity Centre, set up in 2020 in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Here, too, summoned at short notice, was the head of Emergency Response, a woman from the Microbiology Directorate and even someone from ‘Health Equity’. A middle-aged man in a graph-paper-check shirt and worsted wool tie introduced himself as from the FCO, and there was that chap Khan from SIS across the river. One look at him told Holmes this meeting was going to be about more than simply public health.
‘What I fail to understand,’ said the health secretary, as soon as the introductions were over, ‘is how we can be seeing an outbreak of bubonic plague in the Arctic, of all places. It’s not exactly Madagascar. Surely a pathogen like that can’t survive in those freezing temperatures up there, can it? I mean, it’s a virus, right?’
Brendan Holmes gave a discreet cough and held up a hand to correct her. ‘Strictly speaking, Secretary of State, it’s a disease caused by a bacterial strain, not a virus. It’s usually transmitted by infected fleas and—’
‘Right. Yes. Quite. A bacterial strain. So, as I was saying, how can that possibly survive up there in minus whatever-it-is? I can’t believe there are fleas hopping around on the snow in the middle of winter!’ Jay Spelling snorted in derision at the very idea of what she had just described. She looked around the table to see if anyone else was sharing her half-joke. There were a few forced grins.
‘So, Brendan,’ – the health secretary turned to the chief medical officer – ‘give us your assessment, if you will. Is this thing containable? Or are we about to have another Covid-19 situation on our hands here – or worse? And don’t think I’m being funny, but, if I’ve got my history right, the Black Death caused around fifty million deaths – about half of Europe – so I’d quite like to know what we’re dealing with.’
Brendan Holmes couldn’t put his finger on what it was about the health secretary and her mannerisms that intensely irritated him. They just did. He wished they’d left her in Transport, where she could do a lot less damage. He cleared his throat and addressed the NSC.
‘Yes. As it stands, this should be completely containable if the Norwegians act quickly, which they are. They’re already testing, tracking and tracing on Svalbard and there is no evidence the disease has reached these shores, so I see no cause for alarm.’ He tilted his head to one side. ‘It’s true there is about a ten per cent mortality rate for bubonic plague, but—’
‘Treated or untreated?’ interrupted the health secretary.
‘That’s treated, ma’am. Untreated, it’s obviously going to be a lot higher, especially if it develops into pneumonic plague and spreads to the lungs. But with modern antibiotics, like gentamicin and so on, I would expect a full recovery. However …’ Holmes paused and removed his spectacles, blinking, mole-like, as he did so ‘… I should just caution that we don’t yet know what this pathogen is. The symptoms described certainly match bubonic plague, but we won’t know for certain until we get the full spectrum lab read-out from Porton Down.’ Holmes glanced at his watch. ‘We expect the patient to be retrieved and quarantined within the hour. We should get the first results back from pathology before the day’s out.’
‘You’re referring to Dr Mackenzie, right?’ Jay Spelling again. ‘But she’s not the only patient, is she, Brendan?’
‘Well, we can’t be certain at this stage. Of the three UK nationals up there on Svalbard who came into contact with the source of the pathogen in the hut, she is the only one said to be showing symptoms. Her colleague …’ he looked down at his notes for the name ‘… her colleague Chris Coppinger reports feeling symptom-free, but, of course, he’ll have to be screened thoroughly. We were originally intending to send them to Porton Down for testing, but it’s quicker and more convenient to hold them under observation at the Royal Free, here in London. Now, the third scientist, Victor someone – I don’t have his surname to hand – has gone AWOL. All we know is that he fled the site of the original infection. I understand the Norwegians are trying to track him down, but, frankly, I don’t rate his chances out there in the snow.’
‘Director CT?’ The foreign secretary turned to the MI6 director of International Counter-Terrorism, standing in for his chief today. ‘You wished to add something?’
For a large man, Sid Khan spoke surprisingly softly, but Holmes could see that everyone’s attention had now switched to him. Khan was looking up from a tablet he held. ‘I have some sad news to report,’ he said. ‘As of a few minutes ago, Victor Skeet, the third scientist, has indeed perished. I can also tell you that in the last few minutes our Norwegian military intelligence partners, the NIS, have reported that the man they found in the hut is also dead. The Norwegians have labelled him “Patient Zero”.’
‘Patient Zero?’ The health secretary was looking at Khan as she asked this, but it was Holmes who answered.
‘Patient Zero, Secretary of State, is the name given to an individual who’s deemed to be the original source of an outbreak.’
‘Well, let’s not call it that just yet,’ the health secretary replied. ‘Do we have a name for this unfortunate individual?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ resumed Khan. ‘He’s been identified as a Yevgeny Vasiliev.’
‘A Russian?’
‘Yes. A Russian national. That’s not unusual, given the proximity to their mining colony at Barentsburg. But, as you would expect, my Service is working flat out to determine what he was doing there and how he became infected.’
‘I think,’ interjected the foreign secretary, ‘that if this develops we may need an urgent paper from the Joint Intelligence Committee.’
But Jay Spelling, the recently promoted health secretary, was frowning intently. ‘Forgive me,’ she said archly, addressing the MI6 director, ‘but you are the Secret Intelligence Service. Shouldn’t you be sending someone up there straight away to investigate?’
Sid Khan, a veteran of such meetings, remained unruffled. He tipped his head in mock obedience. ‘Absolutely, Secretary of State. We have someone on the case right at this moment.’
14
Barentsburg, Svalbard
Tuesday, 8 March, 1048hrs GMT, 1148hrs local
LUKE CARLTON HAD several abiding memories from his early teenage years, growing up on his uncle’s farm on the windswept moors of Northumberland, and not all of them were happy. But one that always made him smile, even all these years later, was watching those old Laurel and Hardy slapstick comedies from the 1930s and 1940s. After yet another clumsy, cack-handed disaster, the larger of the comedy duo – was it Oliver Hardy? – would often complain: ‘Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!’ This, Luke decided, was exactly how he was feeling at this moment, but he wasn’t smiling now.
Luke was standing some distance back from the ice-encrusted window inside a small supermarket on a street in Barentsburg, watching the pandemonium unfold. Helicopters, police, ambulances, cordons being set up and people moving around dressed in full bio-hazard spacesuits. Jesus, what a mess, and it hadn’t even been him who’d fired the shot. This was supposed to be a quick and discreet operation, an in-and-out. Find Victor Skeet, isolate him and immediately interrogate him on why he’d chosen to flee from that infected hut straight to a Russian mining colony. What did Skeet know that the other two unfortunate Arctic scientists didn’t?
But Victor Skeet was not going to be giving up any answers now. Instead, Luke was watching a blood-soaked and highly infectious corpse getting double-zipped into a neoprene body bag, loaded into a sealed truck and taken off – probably to be incinerated at high temperature.
‘Nice going, Luke. He’s not much use to us now, is he?’ The words of his line manager, Angela Scott, were still ringing in his ears, her frustration barely concealed. Luke had called it in to Vauxhall, of course, within minutes of the Norwegian marksman felling Skeet with the single fatal gunshot to the thigh. Luke knew he’d probably get a bit of grief from the Service, but he hadn’t expected to take the hit for this one.
‘You realize there’ll be a full investigation now, after this?’ Angela had said. ‘You’ve got less than a day before the press get up there. How the hell are you going to make the necessary discreet enquiries in that time?’ It was unlike Angela to be so upset: someone in Whitehall must be coming down hard on her. And she hadn’t finished yet. ‘Honestly, Luke, what is it that we teach you all, down at the Fort? Hmm? Blend in, be the grey man – or woman – and don’t attract attention. I’d say this is not exactly the outcome we were looking for here, wouldn’t you?’
Luke was used to bollockings. He’d experienced enough of them in the Royal Marines. In fact, as a recruit – a ‘nod’ – hardly a day had gone by at the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone when he wasn’t being bellowed at for some minuscule misdemeanour. But this was different: he was nearly twenty years older and wiser, and the one he’d just received from Angela seemed bang out of order, especially when he had come to trust her better judgement. It was almost as if someone above her had told her what to say.
Words formed in his head. Sorry, Angela, you’re quite right. Once we’d tracked down Skeet I really should have cosied up to him and got myself a full dose of plague. All in the line of duty, right? That was what he wanted to say, but he didn’t. He just took it on the chin. He had followed his orders, helped the Norwegian trackers locate Skeet and stopped him before he could infect half of Barentsburg. ‘What can I say, Angela? It’s how it happened, that’s all.’
‘Right. Well, you’ll need to sit tight and lie low until the Norwegian service makes contact with you. You’ve got less than twenty-four hours to find out what you can up there. Then we’re pulling you out. Twenty-four hours, Luke. And, for Pete’s sake, stay well clear of anyone in the media.’
Right now he was on his own. The two Norwegian trackers had given a statement to the investigating police officer sent by the Sysselmann, the governor, then had been swiftly spirited out of there. Probably already on a plane back to Oslo. Luke had duly faded into the background, slipping into a mini-market just as others were coming out on to the street to see what all the fuss was about. He bought himself a packet of fig rolls and half a dozen energy bars, which he would stuff into his pockets after the checkout – he had no idea when or where his next meal would be. Queuing to pay, still wearing his surgical mask, Luke kept one eye out of the window on the building Skeet had emerged from. The Hostel Pogol. That must have been where he spent his last night, poor bastard. He could see a red-and-white police cordon tape, marked ‘POLITI’, strung up around the entrance. Figures in bio-hazard suits were going in and out, and an ambulance had drawn up alongside. Just then, he felt his phone ping: Vauxhall had sent him the ID for his contact in the NIS, the Norwegian Intelligence Service. He studied the image that came up on his screen: Kristian Berge, a pale face with a square jaw. The phone shook in his hand. Incoming call.
‘Luke Carlton? This is Kristian. From NIS.’
